


Descent, Part 2: Intent

by Domimagetrix



Series: From Amber (Forged on Gielinor, Razwan Bahir, Phase One) [3]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Adult Language, Altered Mental States, Blood and Gore, Clinical Dispassion, Gen, Graphic Violence, Mental Breakdown, Mental Institutions, More Nabor, Religious Fanaticism, headcanons ahoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 23:03:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18980155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: A sequel to "Descent," this alternates letters written to Wahisietel by Nabor with Razwan's "quest" to retrieve a Forinthry unicorn horn at Otto's behest. (She's around thirteen at this point.)Tags are especially relevant here. There is some extremely poor handling/identification of mental health issues, plenty of cruelty, and a number of disquieting things suggested if not outright stated. Please go gently, and remember that even if you see the tags and think to yourself, "no big, I'm prepared," you can always stop if it's getting to you.





	Descent, Part 2: Intent

_So, Take me back to Constantinople_   
_No, you can't go back to Constantinople_   
_Been a long time gone, Oh Constantinople_   
_Why did Constantinople get the works?  
That's nobody's business but the Turks’_

They Might Be Giants (originally The Four Lads) - “Istanbul”

 

     One of the most important things I’d come to learn with Otto was that not all of Gielinor was Gielinor. Even beyond the magic, the portals to other planes, some parts of the land itself weren’t truly locations in their own right but in-between places - wide boundary markers that claimed. Mutated. I’d heard my father mention liminal spaces as he’d opined about stories found in a few of his books, but the vague disconnect in a stairwell or hallway between rooms was a diluted fifth cousin to metamorphic spaces spread between one land and another.

     Most of the places I’d been with Otto were border places. We camped close to the river Lum some nights, those days spent standing knee-deep in the silty riverbed learning to be still, so still, until the water around my legs didn’t ripple. I breathed through my mouth, waiting with a knife-whittled stick in my hand until a fish passed close enough to catch. Sometimes I’d stand thus for hours, stepping into the uneasy slickness, bare feet growing first cold then numb as the mica-flecked minerals settled around them, listening to my mentor smoke gristle into twine over the guttering remnants of last night’s campfire. I was given no leave until I had breakfast packaged in silver scales writhing in my hand.

     The whole of Lum wasn’t a border place. Up north near Gunnarsgrunn, it was just a feature of the landscape, a merrily bubbling, churning geographical feature keeping long weeds and farming country in rich deposits with undiscriminating dependability. We kept near Lum the way highwaymen kept to the roads. Places like Gunnarsgrunn and outer Lumbridge’s farmland didn’t interest Otto, however; it was simply passable landscape between one border place and another.

     Sometimes it was just a river, other times a border, and I was beginning to understand that Otto deliberately sought the latter. Desert would give way to fertile greenland, yet grass and reeds stuttered away to pitiable, half-dead scrub along the river’s edge.

     To the north of Al Kharid, we veered off Lum toward a place where the desert began to fade and a chillier, grassier land began, to a pit where giant scorpions lumbered and crawled unevenly over rocks striated with metal.

     I’d vomited at the sight of them. It wasn’t until later that I associated the monstrous things with a border place, a transition-place, their wrongness not a product of magic tinkering or evolution but the environment’s capacity to malign. They’d grown too large and their carapaces no longer covered them completely. Segments of gummy, squelching, slime-coated underflesh became visible as their legs moved, as their bodies turned, and it peeked from below the bases of their malformed claws. The carapaces themselves were odd, too - reddish brown and vaguely pearlescent, as though a scrim of oil had been painted in whorls over their natural armor.

     Waiting only until I’d finished depositing bile and fish onto the sand, Otto planted one of his boots in the small of my back and shoved me into the pit. Two scorpions noticed. I’d scrambled back, dodging imminent claws and tails, panic giving ground back to disgust as I’d realized the things moved with a kind of sluggish blindness that robbed them of their danger.

     Fearsome-looking, sure, but almost helpless, the uneven things were denizens - or victims - of a border place. One had stabbed fruitlessly over and over into the sand where I’d landed, crying in a petulant way that sounded both like a rusty hinge being stressed and an infant screaming through a bitterly sore throat. The other had started forward and paused, tail dragging behind it in the sand, holding its own ungainly claws in front of itself. _I’m supposed to do something with these,_ it seemed to say. _I almost remember what these are for._ Then it’d joined its fellow’s cry with a plaintive, haunting one. _I only understand enough to know I’m damned._

     We’d moved on once I’d killed both and scraped my gum-splattered knife in the sand, using a cloth to remove the congealed mess from the weapon. Both kills were formalities. I could’ve walked away with no hurry in my steps. Otto had been adamant, and the hatred I’d cultivated for him when we’d set out was refreshed.

     Lum was as much a border place as not. Our trek north brought us to others, to points where the river acted as a dividing point for grass and a burned-looking forest of something that was neither tree nor bush, but a skeletal remnant existing in some slippery state between the two. For a moment I’d feared the forest or the dilapidated mansion beyond it was our next destination, but we passed it without venturing in.

     North. North and north, to places that were neither hot nor cold but some aggressively fluctuating needle-tick between them which ignored the various comfortable plateaus. Then beyond, where the needle finally stopped ticking and settled on the uncomfortable side of cool.

     Edgeville.

 

_________________________

 

_Wahisietel,_

 

_I take it you’ve witnessed Sliske’s latest creative endeavor. It might surprise you learn that I was also in attendance, although he’s usually more insistent upon your viewership than mine._

_I don’t envy anyone to whom he attaches himself. Of all of us, I understand him the least, and I can’t imagine how trying his vies for your attention must be._

_His projects are blasphemous nonsense, mostly, although by now I think his reliance upon it for comedic relief has inoculated most of the Empire against satire. He isn’t visibly straining yet, but there will come a point where the trick must lose its novelty. It’s difficult to say whether his position or his unique nature should be thanked for preventing anyone from calling him on heresy. His plays seem to act as a pressure valve in any case; absurd as they are, there’s a marked dip in violent incident reports and general discontent for several weeks after each performance._

_Perhaps that’s why our Lord sees fit to let him go on as he does, but I digress._

_There was a moment in the final act. A phrase, to be more precise, just after the behemoth collapses under the weight of the fusillade. “Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.” Spoken by the character responsible for the beast’s release - as a lesson, presumably, to the gathered Senators - just before they die. Probably Sliske’s most profane piece of writing, and yet it resonated with me._

_Abyssus Abyssum Invocat. “Hell invokes itself,” an oddly somber declaration given the otherwise ludicrous tone of the piece._

_You know of my study into the regions which suffer for sustained inter-realm crossover. The abnormalities in flora and fauna, the environmental changes, and I’ve shared with you my findings in the human settlement which previously played host to unframed portals between this world and several demonic planes. The per capita trebling of psychological distresses severe enough to warrant stays in the asylum. This would’ve been fourteen years ago - not long, but since that initial study I have discovered something interesting._

_Perhaps problematic._

_The impacted region seems to be growing. Not the settlement itself, but what I’ve termed the Area of Influence. It’s as though the effects are self-perpetuating - and self-propagating - if the initial damage hits a certain (and unknown) threshold. I’ve checked additional locations, and two others are increasing in radius. Places where summoning and travel was less intensive have avoided it; if anything, reports of elevated disturbance have diminished since my initial findings._

_But the three locations where the Area of Influence grows present a problem, as you can well imagine. I’m at a loss as to whom I should alert. One of the locations is Paddewwa. The entirety of it. A disproportionate number of our asylum residents are from there._

_Strangely, I was tempted to discuss it with Sliske. “Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.” I wonder if he knows something, or suspects something._

_I welcome your wisdom, if not your taste in entertainment._

 

_-Nabor_

 

_________________________

 

     Soldiers in Edgeville had referred to this place as the Wilderness, and always voiced with the kind of distaste cultivated by the mind when it cannot sustain fear. Scorn or madness, the thin illusion of choice.

     But this wasn’t a wilderness. There was no overgrowth, no congested jungle strangling itself like an overeager cluster of verdant children reaching greedily for the same sun. The trees and ground brush were sparse, twisted things looking bewildered to find themselves alive in the rocky landscape. Looking up, I saw a few raggedy birds wheeling in the air and had my answer: where birds go, seeds go. Few had germinated; those that’d managed it were struggling bitterly with their success. Had I been one of them I might’ve grown and reached upward out of pure spite, enriched solely by the need to strangle the birds that’d deposited me here.

     I thought of Otto.

     Wind kicked up a kind of rocky grit that wasn’t quite sand into the air, wearing at everything it touched. The leavings of ancient necromancy wandered aimlessly across the dirt hardpan. Most of their bones had been sanded down by countless years’ worth of windswept grit, becoming frail for it. Some of the skeletons paused, turning their skull heads side to side as though searching for something, then lifted their phalanges in front of their eye sockets as though trying to recall both their purposes.

     They reminded me of the scorpions. I steered away, keeping to the withering tail of Lum, and pressed northward.

     Time grew thin. The cloud cover in Edgeville had dimmed the sun to a sickly, circular ghost of itself, then thickened until nothing save a dusky plum light reached the land below. Occasionally the clouds would break, permitting glimpses of a nacreous upper layer that shone with color, like rainbows formed in moonlight, then close in on themselves again. There was no sun to mark the passage of time.

     Nor, later, did that light dim with the setting of the unseen sun. There was no perceptible or useful change, and looking back in the direction from which I’d come told me little once the crumbling stone wall had faded into the grit-hazed distance. A bitter resentment paired itself with exhaustion, and, seeing nothing else, I squatted, cupping my hand into a crude shovel. I scraped and dug a shallow indentation into the rise next to the river.

     I took the dried husks of branches from along the edge and set my steel at an angle, scraping, until the wood began to smolder. It wouldn’t burn properly, but the smolder was better than nothing.

_Whole place is made of hate. Even the wood has a fucking attitude._

     I slept in my shallow alcove with the ersatz campfire smoking the air’s smell of dry death into a mockery of warmth. As I drifted into uneasy sleep, something howled in the distance. Then screamed as yet another thing tore into into it, putting tooth or claw into an intruder.

     Or a meal.

     Three “days” passed thus, trailing the river and then the paltry trickle of water, until I found a thicker spread of brush interspersed with bleak trees.

     And the first of the unicorns.

 

_________________________

 

_Wahisietel,_

 

_Very well, I’ll keep my own counsel, at least where Sliske’s concerned. Your lengthy invective aside, I do see your point - unique or no, he is still a Praetorian who spends his time in Praetorian circles. I doubt our conversations would move any of them toward leniency. Instead, I’ve taken Verdech into my confidence alongside you._

_Now I tell you what I’ve told our esteemed artisan: Azzanadra’s fervor has extended beyond faith. It’s a conclusion with which he agrees, and I suspect your dour countenance during services indicates your own accord._

_I warn you, old friend. As ill-advised as telling Sliske would’ve been, your perceived distaste for the sermons has earned you some nascent suspicion among some of the Pontifices. Nothing quite so grand as concern, not yet, but where the Praefectus Praetorio has eluded glances askance, you have not. A few selective appearances at non-mandatory functions might undo what’s begun._

_Perhaps it isn’t my place to say, but if these concerns we share are to be acted upon, we’d do best with more level heads than fewer. Act the part. Simply enduring Azzanadra during one of his lectures and nodding in the right places has done more for my standing than any amount of work done for the Empire itself. Dim your shadow, Legatus._

_That said, I speak to you of the asylum. A few others have begun formulating procedures for treatment, including for those who’ve come in contact with those Areas of Influence I mentioned before. The idea that the Chthonian I interviewed simply fell prey to one of these Areas has been dismissed; it would seem exposure doesn’t impact demons as it does humans. We seem to be immune, as well. This helps with categorizing and tailoring to suit the needs of each - the fewer the variables, the easier my job._

_The most prominent of the AoI’s effects: violent tendencies. I’ve begun testing a new idea, one wherein the patient is permitted to act upon those tendencies rather than learn techniques to subdue them. Four of the afflicted have been taken to the unicorn herd territories and allowed to dispatch their fill before being returned to their asylum quarters. The purpose is twofold - my test, and clearing the animals from land Mizzarch sets his architect’s eyes upon with intent._

_Mizzarch himself sent me a bottle of wine for it. I’ve no use for alcohol personally, but I’ve sent it along with this letter since you seem little disabused of the notion that sobriety in your spare time makes for more fruitful spare time. Then again, your tolerance probably makes achieving inebriation a difficult task._

_Ignore that last bit. Enjoy the wine._

 

_-Nabor_

 

_________________________

 

     It was an adolescent. Finally, a shred of luck.

     It wasn’t so much a unicorn as a bunch of wiry gristle wrought into the rough, emaciated shape of one. Rellekkan ones were thinner than their leaf-munching counterparts south of Lumbridge, but this one looked as though every trace of fat had been funneled out. Its hide clung to ligaments and bands of muscle so taut that it looked less like a living being and more like a model of equine internal organs with all the insulation melted away.

     I shifted on all fours, getting closer. It pawed at the dead shrubs with a hoof, inciting a chorus of agitated squeals from whatever nested beneath their limbs. It shrieked back at them.

     Closer. It had to be this one. I couldn’t take on a herd, not even if I’d had a proper weapon. The knife held edge-out and resting along my forearm was all I’d been allowed when I’d set out.

     Stone grit prickled my palm as I edged in closer, watching the unicorn’s tail swing and swat in irritation. Something had been at it; a largeish patch of hair was missing, and the tail’s rightward swing jerked short of even with the leftward, as though it’d been broken.

     Closer.

     Hooves pounded the dry ground to the right. I shuffled back, ignoring the prickle of dead branches along my back.

     Another unicorn, this one not yet an adult but either older or better-fed than the first, careened in with horn down. I had a moment to curse before my little target was gored.

_No, fuck you that was MINE._

     Anger and adrenaline combined into a frothy stupidity punch and I stood, screaming at the newcomer as it first pushed the little unicorn forward then backtracked, dragging its blood-coated horn out from between the other’s ribs.

     “You _BITCH!”_

     It pawed its victim, raised its head to the cloud-mottled sky, and screeched.

     “Fuck you, oh you hateful bitch that was _mine!”_

     The unicorn lifted its foot to paw the whining other, ignoring its death-jerks, and paused.

     It turned to me.

     A little of my stupidity drained away. Just enough, but not soon enough.

     The new unicorn - champion of this little patch of wasted brush - turned, lowered its head, and charged.

     I pivoted away, zeroed in on the nearest dead tree, and ran.

 

_________________________

 

_Wahisietel,_

 

_I’ve some encouraging news - it seems alteration to human patients’ psychologies via exposure to AoI isn’t necessarily permanent. Some continue to show no improvement, but some upon whom I’ve begun the new test are regaining their previous equilibrium._

_There is no change based on exposure time or whether or not they were exposed to the central point versus its outer rim. Nor is everyone impacted; at rough estimate, I’d say perhaps only ten to twelve percent of the settlement’s inhabitants are susceptible to it._

_I may expand the test to include more subjects. I’m fairly confident in my estimate for the settlement, but two of four patients who’ve been set to the unicorn grounds have shown no change, and four is a dismal sample from which to draw figures._

_I’ve suggested moving the settlement some distance from its current location. If the areas continue widening it may prove a temporary solution, but I’ll have more to offer once I determine the rate of expansion and whether or not that rate is changing._

_I suspect the expansion is slow. It may very well be that the growth rate will halt, or - and this is my hope - it’ll reverse itself like a wound mending._

_Then again, some wounds are internal. We may be witness only to what equates to “surface damage,” which heals, but internal injuries are a different matter._

_Perhaps I’m being melancholy. The world itself is hardly a living being in truth, is it? Though its communities of life do resemble a living body’s systems, it isn’t the same thing. A world is, however, an object. Objects shatter when subject to the right stress._

_...it still nests in my mind like infection. “Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.”_

_It’s a dark thing that I cannot go to he who leads us all, or his appointed. Under the circumstances, the word “fate” will agitate me._

_With my own disinclination bared, I still urge you to spend more time at the temple. Call me a hypocrite, but do it. There are whispers, and Azzanadra - distanced from us though he may be in every other respect - hearkens unto them when they do reach him._

 

_-Nabor_

 

_________________________

 

     It wasn’t far; small favors were still favors. I leaped, hearing hoofbeats coalesce into a distance-closing gallop behind me, and captured a low branch in one hand. I swung with my own momentum, wrapping legs around the trunk. Hard, dry flakes of bark scored the insides of my thighs through the thin material of my pants. My fingers howled indignation; these weren’t smoothed poles, nor were my hands coated in chalk, and I didn’t have the luxury of pacing myself as I had at Burthorpe’s course under Otto’s gimlet eye. My fingers continued shouting their lack of thanks as I jammed my heel into a juncture of limb and trunk, hauling myself up, taking handholds where I could get them.

_Fuck up fucked up fucking up UP UP GO FUCK JUST GO UP, FUCK!_

     It felt comically slow given the rapid approach of hoofbeats, but up I went. Angles ceased to matter, and my fate rested in the branches of a tree whose very core had died long before I’d been born.

_SHIT-_

     The branch in my right hand gave with a splintered crack and I swung out, held aloft by my left and the bootheel dug into a depression in another thick branch.

_Fuck this, if I live, I’m going right back to Otto and calling it quits. I don’t have to. I don’t have to do this, fucking pointless, unicorn horns aren’t worth a damn._

     I got the toe of my other boot underneath a knotted jut of dead wood and levered myself back against the trunk, gripping, squeezing my eyes shut.

     A rage-filled shriek threatened to send blood spurting from inside my ears.

     Something impacted the trunk, making it thrum. Numbness spread to my hands and refused to placate the scrapes’ sharp whining.

_Fucking stop fuck-_

     Another impact, and I gripped what there was to grip to stay put. It felt like the world’s elbow had been knocked just so, vibratory and dully painful, and I ventured a look down.

     The unicorn was rearing, pushing its body weight front and planting forehooves in a lunge against the trunk. Impact resounded up the tree. My angry new friend slid down, scraping dual tracks into the flaky bark. It glared up at me with petulant, bleeding rage, and reared again.

 _Thrumm._ It opened its wraith-mouth wide and screamed at me. I clung to the tree and screamed back.

     It closed its mouth and blinked at me. The break in its stride was small, but it was there. _You don’t scream, I scream._

     “Stupid _cunt!”_ Some remnant of the earlier dumb bravado took hold in me again and I leaned forward. I spat down into its face.

     Its surprise fled in the wake of fresh anger. Another rear, another _thrum,_ and the knife I’d slid into my pocket before leaping into the tree slid as I half-crouched to keep center mass close to the trunk. I felt it start to go, let go the branch, and slapped my hand against my hip to stop it.

     Too late. It went end-over-end, struck a branch, and spun away to the dirt.

_Fuck._

     The unicorn took another lunge at the trunk, hitting paydirt. I felt more than heard the essential _crack,_ the tree’s dead core giving in to the onslaught. My place of safety was the splintering mast of a derelict ship - hollow, brittle, preparing to give way.

_Fuck me._

 

_________________________

 

_Wahisietel,_

 

_Forgive the relative brevity of this letter. Another influx of patients suffering the ill effects of AoI arrived two days ago, and my time for personal pursuits - even those which serve the Empire by coincidence or minor skullduggery - is slim._

_It appears my first conclusions were drawn in haste. While those for whom the unicorn-dispatching works are regaining something of their former selves, it appears the practice isn’t curative. It’s a treatment in truth, the kind of thing that must be done every so often or the subject reverts to their previous, unpredictably violent state._

_The others - my “control” group so far as control can be had in this matter - have begun to self-destruct. I’ve lost five in as many days. Those that remain, treated and untreated alike, have begun waxing apostate. The goals of the Empire are questioned in loud, emotive bouts of coherence. The less communicative do not respond in kind, but they’ve grown attentive to the others’ words._

_Legatus. Wahisietel. I’ve stood in Azzanadra’s path. He was insisting my patients be hauled in for interrogation and possible execution on the grounds of heresy. I tried to explain what insanity does to the mind, that both those things might as well be done to newborns for all they’d understand the situation._

_In for a brick, in for a building, I suppose. I’m not sure whether I was talking about my patients’ states or that of the Pontifex Maximus._

_My patients’ rants have grown uncomfortably compelling. It may be that I’ll have to speak against Azzanadra alone._

_Pray for me, old friend._

 

_-Nabor_

 

_________________________

 

     The tree wasn’t going to last. Another lunge, maybe two, and I was going down no matter how tightly I held to it.

_Weaponless. Stupid. Should’ve been careful._

     The branch in my hand broke, leaving me gripping a thick, sharp shard of dead wood. I nearly dropped it in my eagerness to latch back onto the tree, but clamped my fingers around its thickness before it could slide out and fall.

     The unicorn screeched at me again. It’s muscles were bunching again, readying to rear.

_Fine. I’m coming to you, sweetness. Be a good cunt and stay… right…_

     I leaped out, pushing myself as the unicorn shoved against the tree. I heard the shattering as I fell, feet down, landing with a vicious punch of the animal’s protruding backbone to my pubic bone. I snatched a matted hank of its mane before I could slide off, locking bootheels where hips tapered down toward its crotch.

     The unicorn fell back to all fours, snort-squealing, and backtracked away from the tree. Its head shook, and I clung with one hand in its greasy hair while readying the lucky stake in the other.

     I struck, and it reared again.

     Gravity shifted and vertigo nearly lost me my grip, but I held, jabbing in panic at the side of its neck. As the unicorn fell back to quadruped, its backbone _thumped_ quietly between my legs and refreshed the astonishing amount of pain making a home for itself there.

_“Fuckyou-”_

     I felt something slam into the unicorn from the right, and the hank of hair in my hand was ripped away. I fell to the ground in a half-stand before my legs collapsed. I landed on my ass and hiss-moaned as everything between my hips wailed at the gentle aftershock of abuse.

     It was the other unicorn, the first one.

     Its side was coated in tacky blood, dark and drying, with a jellied, hair-speckled clump filling the hole in its flank and oozing around its edges. Its eyes rolled madly as it drove its horn a couple of rib-spaces down from where its own wound had been delivered. The other unicorn staggered, impaled twice, my sad little weapon bobbing absurdly from the side of its neck.

     The larger of the two sank to the ground, taking the smaller unicorn’s head down with it.

     They lay like that, positioned as though the smaller unicorn had expired nudging the larger one up.

     I leaned to the side, dragging myself toward the pair. The little one was dead; there was no mistaking it this time. The single eye I could see was dull, unfocused. An impatient fly landed on the shiny surface and began washing its legs.

     My unicorn’s legs twitched here and there, lips peeling back from its teeth in stuttering rage. I could see muscles and tendons straining in its legs. It opened its mouth to scream impotently at me, but all it could produce was a wetly-vibrating _hhhhAAAAAH,_ a leathery whisper like an old smoker’s attempt to articulate the pain of dying.

     I crawl-slid on my side toward them, snatching my knife as I went, and batted away the muzzle that dip-scraped against the ground in its effort to find me.

     I didn’t wait for it to finish with the business of dying. Half-inclined over its neck for support, I wedge-tapped the edge of my knife around the base of its horn, widening the search until I felt the faintest give. Then I drove it in properly and levered, listening to the dull crack-crunch as something with bone in it broke.

     Working, working, I freed the horn’s base from the unicorn’s skull, interrupted less and less as I worked, as the unicorn’s spiteful adherence to life bled away. Pulling on the horn, I slid the blade beneath the stretched hide, and cut.

     It felt like wet twine breaking beneath my hand. I wanted to let go but didn’t, the sour tang of spent adrenaline flavoring the back of my tongue with salty metal. The horn and the section of skull pulled away, hide ripping with the sound of wet meat being split.

     I held it aloft. Loose, ragged, bloody hide wiggled from the horn’s base with my hand’s shaking.

     “Mine. It’s mine. Cunt.”

     I looked down. My unicorn looked strange without its horn. Unfinished, not just lacking a part but as though the removal of it had undone something that held the rest of the animal together. It wasn’t a hornless unicorn but something new. Its eye rolled up at me.

     It whined.

     A ball of something dense and achy formed at the base of my throat. I sounded as though I’d taken on a little of its leathery attempt to scream into my own voice.

     “Just die. Please just fucking die.”

     I sat there with them, leaning on the unicorn’s neck, rising and sinking faintly with its miserable breathing.

     Sometime later, too long later, it died.

     I started my trek south.

 

_________________________

 

_Wahisietel,_

 

_To echo my earlier letter: apologies for the brevity in this one._

_Two points:_

_My patients have grown fairly quiet. All of them. They’re sullen, distant, and surly, but the violence has all but stopped. However, none have lost the capacity - if directed, they seem to be able to tap into the uncontrolled rage from before - and they don’t seem to suffer in any measurable way for having killed. There is recognition, but it’s clinical. And unsettling. But they may be of use to the Empire and our Lord despite everything._

_I’ve been summoned to Azzanadra’s private quarters, for what he has termed a “quiet discussion.” Perhaps I’ll discover how deeply his suspicions run._

_Or his madness, perhaps._

_Remember to keep your shadow dim, Legatus. Abyssus Abyssum Invocat._

 

_-Nabor_


End file.
